From principles to repeatable work
The SHAPE Framework defines responsibilities, artifacts, and checkpoints. The guides explain how a practitioner can carry out the work. They are organized by activity rather than by job title, because a Product Engineer often coordinates multiple activities with architects, UX designers, and business stakeholders.
These guides describe recommended practices and concrete outputs. They do not replace the enterprise's existing security, review, acceptance, or regulated-product procedures. Where a guide offers a prompt, template, or example, treat it as a starting point rather than a mandatory incantation.
Discovery and definition
Conduct Discovery explains how to turn stakeholder conversations into an explicit problem, desired outcomes, and scope. Write Feature Specifications shows how to capture business behavior, exceptions, and acceptance conditions in a maintainable document.
Environment and implementation
Prepare a Project for Agents explains how the architect prepares the repository and completes Architecture Readiness Review with the Product Engineer and relevant enterprise owners. Direct Coding Agents describes short implementation loops guided by specifications and evaluated through running behavior.
Reviews and verification
Conduct Architect Reviews describes technical assessment and resolution of meaningful findings. Review Working Software helps the Product Engineer distinguish feedback from new scope or misunderstood requirements. Run Spec-Based Testing provides a method for independent checks derived from the specification corpus.
Acceptance and learning
Prepare for UAT explains the handoff into normal business acceptance. Improve Shared Practices covers brief retrospectives and governed promotion of improvements into enterprise materials.
How to use a guide
Start with the activity's purpose, responsible roles, inputs, actions, outputs, and completion criteria. Follow linked artifact explanations for definitions. Compare the guidance to the Reference Project for a small example of the full sequence. Adapt optional techniques to local policy without removing the framework's core controls.